Sony's new -- and old -- Walkmans (pictures)

Pre-iPod, Sony's Walkman was the personal music player of the future. Now it's making a comeback -- with a little help from Android. Here are the new models, and a nostalgia-fueled look at the classics.

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Walkman rocks with Android

Once the vanguard of mobile entertainment, the Sony Walkman is ready to make a comeback -- and Google is playing in the band, adding Android 4.0 to the new Walkman lineup.

Sony says the Android-powered music player will deliver a distortion-killing S-Master Digital Amplifier from Sony and a "richer, bolder, and louder presence." The E470 Series, seen here, has a 2-inch screen and is 7-millimeters thick.

Integrating the Sony Entertainment Network's cloud-based Music Unlimited Service, the new Walkman will give users access to more than 14 million songs. With a monthly subscription, Music Unlimited lets users transfer their music and ad-free radio channels to their Walkman to listen offline. The device supports drag-and-drop transfers of music, photos, videos, podcasts, and playlists from iTunes for Windows via Media Go software or Windows Media Player.

The new NWZ-E570 series Walkman

The E570 series Walkman also runs Android 4.0 and has a 2-inch QVGA LCD screen and will come in an 8GB model capable of holding 1,750 songs as well as a 16GB model with capacity for 3,650 songs. Pricing information is currently unavailable.

It's hard to imagine our lives without portable music--nowadays most of us can fit our entire music collection into an MP3 player the size of a deck of cards. But 30 years ago, as people hefted boom boxes off their shoulders, they ooohed and ahhhhed in fascination at a little machine called the Walkman.

Originally, portable cassette players were marketed for people who needed to record audio clips for their work, like journalists and businesspeople, but Sony's Walkman brought the idea of playing cassettes to the masses. Not only did many Walkmans have a cassette player, an AM/FM dial, and dual headphone jacks, they also had cool features like autoreverse, play, and record.

The Walkman II, circa 1981

Commonly known as the Walkman II, this 1981 WM-2 model sold 1.5 million units, making it the best-selling cassette Walkman to date. Its design was considered much more modern and stylish than the TPS-L2. It first came out in metallic gray and later was sold in black and red.

The WM-4

The WM-4 came out in 1983 and was designed to be the budget version of earlier, more-expensive models. It was one of the loudest Walkmans because it used four AA batteries rather than the traditional two.

The WM-F10

The 1984 Sony WM-F10 Walkman was similar to an earlier model, the WM-10, but it had an FM stereo radio. Engineers worked hard to figure out how to mount the radio equipment into the small body of this Walkman. They ended up building it into the cassette door, successfully making this model only slightly larger than its predecessor.

The WM-AF64

1988 is when Walkmans got really sophisticated. The WM-AF64 had autoreverse, AM/FM built into the cassette door, metal tape compatibility, and Dolby B NR -- but it was the two different levels of "Mega Bass" that really wowed.

The WM-FX413

Obviously, by 1995 the Mega Bass was coming in handy -- over half the Top 10 songs were either rap or R&B. The WM-FX413 Walkman had two settings of Mega Bass, along with continuous or once only autoreverse.

The WM-EX652

By 1997, Walkmans really were becoming much sleeker. The WM-EX652 was considered one of the best cassette Walkmans of that year, along with a whole slew of features, like logic controls, blank skip, track repeat, and automatic music search, it also had Mega bass and "Groove" to enhance the sound of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" ballad.

Sony's digital Walkman

Sony ruled portable cassette players throughout the 1980s and '90s, but with the onset of digital music and iPods, it lost its market hold. It still uses the name Walkman for its digital music players and continues to come out with different models with unique features.

Pictured here is Sony's newest touch-screen X-Series Walkman, complete with a wireless antenna for getting onto hot spots and free music with the Slacker app. This app lets you choose from genre- and decade-based stations in the Slacker rotation. So, for now, people can tune into 1980s hits and sing along with REO Speedwagon's "Keep On Loving You."